The Key To A Successful Migration

Data migration is almost universally dreaded by IT professionals undertaking
complex, application-level consolidation or renewal projects. A recent survey
Celona conducted amongst telecom's IT professionals showed that 93 percent were
fearful of application-level migration. This might seem a surprisingly high
number, but unfortunately there are sound reasons for this level of unease.
According to Bloor Research, over 80 percent of data migration projects are not
delivered on time or to budget. Bloor's Phil Howard explained that research has
revealed that Forbes 2,000 companies already spend at least $5 billion per year
on migrations, and yet cost overruns average 30 percent and time overruns
average 41 percent.

You might ask how this is possible? The answer is largely due to the fact
that data migration is still not regarded as a valued skill and practice in its
own right, but is treated as the final hurdle in a complex project. At a recent
British Computer Society (BCS) meeting Phil Dance, CIO, BT bemoaned this fact.
“Data migration is the single biggest thing that kills you,” he warned.

A successful migration

So what makes one migration work where another fails to get out of the box?
What ensures one comes in on budget, while another is massively overspent? Well,
a successful migration is founded on getting three things right: people, process
and technology. Getting any one or more of these three wrong will destabilize
the entire project. Select a good method and then develop or buy a tool to
deliver the data for you. But the problem is that large migrations are extremely
complex on a variety of levels and the sheer scale of them soon leads to
challenges.

Let's consider one of these three key success factors-migration technology.
Analyzing different migration projects reveals there are five main types of data
migration.

A complex project may require multiple data migration approaches to be used
at different times or in combination, in order to deliver the results needed by
the business. However, data migration tools-whether proprietary or third
party-have tended to be built to deliver a particular type of data migration.
Delivering a complex application migration requires flexibility in the data
migration tool used, as it is not always possible to predict how things are
going to change during the course of the project, or exactly which approaches
will be needed at the start of the project.

Data migration tools

In response to the demand for flexible, multi-purpose tools, a new
generation of data migration tools is emerging.

Progressive migration tools are one of the third-generation of third-party
tools that are coming onto the market. They employ a flexible strategy for
application-level data migration, enabling different migration approaches to be
used during the course of the project, or in combination, as is needed.

Paul Hollingswort

The author is Director-Product Marketing, Celona Technology